A/N- Sorry for the slight hiatus! I've had school and work and been getting home after 12 hours of stuff to do! Hopefully this long chapter makes up for it! Also a massive thank you to everyone who reviewed and encouraged me to keep up with this story and update regularly. You're all the best!

Oh and I've also decided I'll try to update both this story and Secret Santa, then I'll post up the start of another fanfic I've begun to write. How does that sound? Good? Good.

Enjoy! ~MBL xx

12 HOURS SINCE MISSING

JJ couldn't help but look into Holly's crazed eyes. They were nothing she had ever seen before – whatever drug Price had given her, it must've been either a high dose or was extremely strong.

Price…

Price.

The name sounded familiar to JJ, but she couldn't figure out where or when she had heard it. She was mentally berating herself for forgetting this name when Reid broke her out of her thoughts.

"Look at her," Reid whispered.

"She must be pretty drugged for her to be in this state, right?" Rossi asked.

"Yes, but look at her physical state," Hotch pointed out. JJ, still mesmerized with her eyes, looked at her body as a whole and let out a gasp.

Holly's entire torso was bandaged, and JJ could only assume that was where Charlie had punched her while she was on the phone with JJ. The entire right side of her face was swollen, which led JJ to hypothesize that the UnSub was left-handed.

"It looks like it could be broken ribs," Blake guessed, squinting to try to get a better look at the woman on the screen.

"Baby Girl, did you get anything from Charlie Price?" Morgan asked.

"So far, my Chocolate Thor, nada. Nothing. Zip." Garcia replied dejectedly.

"Absolutely nothing?" Rossi asked, perplexed.

"All I got is a birth certificate for the seventeenth of July, nineteen-seventy, and a school record until he graduates his senior year. After that, he's gone off the grid."

"So he's using an alias?" Hotch questioned.

"Or he's amazing at technology – which I'm beginning to believe – and he's sealed and hidden all of his records." Garcia replied. "But, fear not, Avengers, for I shall find them and get back to you. Garcie-out!" Garcia clicked a button on the keyboard, ending their video chat.

"When was the last time she was drug tested?" Hotch asked. "I thought I asked her for this a while ago."

"She seems to be a little bit obsessed with the Avengers as of late." JJ commented, turning away from the screen to look at the team.

"Actually, she's been into it for quite some time," Reid began. "Last week, I went into her lair and I saw photos of us all photoshopped as certain Avengers. Hotch was Captain America, Morgan was Thor, Rossi was Iron Man, I was Beast, Blake was Firebird, JJ was the Black Widow and Garcia herself was Ms. Marvel. I can only assume that with this new nickname, she'll have one of Holly as the White Tiger soon enough."

Everyone just shook their heads.

"I'm struggling to imagine Rossi in an Iron Man costume, maybe next Halloween?" Morgan asked, smirking.

"Or how about Hotch in the classic red, white and blue?" Rossi asked, deflecting the question. Blake responded to this by hitting him on the arm.

"This guy, Charlie, or whatever his name is, is obviously taunting us by sending us the live video. But is it us he's punishing, or is it Holly?" Blake questioned, confusion etched across her face.

"How could he be punishing Holly, if she's absolutely drugged out of her mind?" JJ asked, hesitant to know the answer.

"She may be drugged drastically, but they could most likely be hallucinogens, or he could be using a date rape drug, which means she will forget about all of these issues, but if taken in strong doses, she could suffer from retrograde and even severe amnesia, where he'd be able to project new thoughts and memories in her head." Reid explained.

JJ started to feel sick to her stomach. "So what? She knows she's being recorded, but then she forgets, but then what does he tell her?"

"We are recording her for our own pleasure, we want to see her in pain, we blame her for the rapes of those seven girls. Anything, really." Reid responded.

"So why is she looking at the camera like that?" Rossi asked, and everyone turned to the screen once more and sure enough, Holly was still staring at the camera, her eyes as crazed as before.

"It appears he injected the drug into her bloodstream, which most likely means he added a hallucinogen to it, therefore she is having a hallucination which leads her to involve the camera or us in some way."

"And she won't remember any of this?" Morgan asked.

"Not if he's using a date rape drug." Reid concluded.

"Shit," Morgan summarized.

"If only we could find you," JJ whispered, going unnoticed by everyone but Blake and Reid, who shared sympathetic looks that she was unable to see as her focus was solely on the blond on the screen.

"We need to start working on the profile more," Hotch commanded. "If he is keeping her in this terrible state, then finding her has become much more important. We can't handle losing one of our agents, especially when she only joined the team yesterday."

The rest of the team nodded, and started contributing bits and pieces to the profile. JJ wasn't really paying too much attention. She was staring at Holly, who still hadn't broken eye contact with the camera. To anyone else, it would seem like they were just staring at each other, but the team knew different, so they just kept to work on their profile and left JJ to collect her thoughts.

After a few more minutes of the team starting up a profile and JJ observing the video, she was suddenly brought out of her thoughts by Hotch.

"JJ," he called.

"Sorry, what?" JJ apologized, turning to the team. "I spaced out for a second."

"I said, what can you tell us about Holly's behavior when she was eighteen? We think that whatever happened to her then was linked to what is happening now."

"Oh, alright. Well, until her seventeenth birthday, she was just like any other teenager, though leaning more towards the rebellious side. She would party like you wouldn't believe, and she was always sarcastic and joking around. She always took risks, and was constantly living life on the edge. I guess I was the opposite, always grounded. We balanced each other out, like Yin and Yang.

"Then it was her seventeenth birthday, and we had the party at my place. We just invited a few girlfriends from the soccer team that we were close with, but Holly had a lot to drink and she was starting to get out of control."

JJ blinked back a few years from her eyes and took a shaky breath before she continued. "So I called her parents, told them what was happening, and the next thing I know, all three of them – Holly's parents and her older brother – were at the door, waiting to pick her up. My god they were furious! Holly didn't want to leave her own party without a fight, but eventually they made her get in the car. I kicked everyone out after that. How can you have a party for someone when they're not even there, right?"

She looked down on the floor, unable to look at her team. "The next morning I got a call from Holly. She was panicking – she told me she was at the hospital; that her family was in a car crash. I immediately headed over there. Holly's mom and her brother Tyler had died on the scene, and her dad was in a coma – they didn't think he was going to wake up. Holly had a broken hand, a concussion and a fractured foot. She started to have a severe case of survivor's guilt. Her dad wasn't getting better, and he was declared brain dead. Holly had to be the once to decide to turn off life-support and it was really traumatizing for her.

"Everyone felt bad for her, but she didn't want to hear it. She stayed at the hospital for as long as she could before being put in her granddad's custody, but he had no idea how to take care of a teenage girl who had gone through as much trauma as Holly had, so they came to an agreement; she would live at her place, and Robert would remain her emergency contact and legal guardian."

JJ started picking at her nails, a tell that she did not do often, and finally looked back up at her team. "Every time I would go to her place – and I started to do that a lot – I would find something else smashed. Her parent's room liked like a twister had gone through it. I would always find Holly in her room, staring at one of her old family photos, listening to heavy metal or grunge. She started slipping away, she would only talk to me or her granddad, and she was starting to do poorly at school. Her grades were going from a B average to Ds. She never played music anymore, which was a big deal; she only listened to metal and rock. Even her soccer skills were becoming rusty; she was missing easy goals and started to fight on the field. The coach gave her a suspension, and she didn't take that too well.

"I started going to her place to find she had been drinking a lot that day. I finally told her to snap out of it and I reminded her that alcohol was what had gotten her into that mess in the first place. She took a swing at me – I mean, she actually tried to punch me. Then she went into hysterics and broke down. I then told her that she was going to be living with me and my mom, and there were no excuses."

JJ paused for a moment, to look back at Holly, who was still staring intently into the camera and muttering nonsense. "She started to get better; Mom was being really strict on her and she really needed it. Of course, she wasn't okay, but she was getting there. Her grades were getting to Cs, she did a few guitar gigs at our local bar, and when she came back to soccer better than ever, she was asked to be captain. She turned it down, saying she could never be a leader, and took the vice-captain position and I got the captaincy role.

"Then she met a guy. I never knew who he was, but some days she would be gone from the house all night and show up the next morning with hickeys all over her neck, no matter how much she tried to hide them. Every time I'd ask her, she'd just dismiss me and assure me nothing was going on and I guess it didn't matter, because she was better, and that's all I could've hoped for."

"On the day of the championship match, we were really getting psyched. Holly and I had our own pre-game rituals where we would just go on runs and clear our heads before the game. The school let us have the day off to prepare for that night's game, so we went on a few runs, did some laps at a friend's pool, then we calmed down and watched a few movies. As captain and vice, we were ready for the match three hours before it started. We were already in our uniforms and were training like you wouldn't believe. We ended up winning; in the last five minutes, we were three all, and Holly kicked the winning goal just in time.

"God, you should've seen us! The team was hoisting us onto their shoulders and the entire town was cheering with us. A scout from the University of Pittsburgh came and offered us scholarships and everything was going perfectly, Holly was even asked to go to U Penn, which she turned down because she wanted us to go to college together."

JJ realized she was spilling a lot more than she should, and some of it wasn't even relevant to the case, but she had kept all of these memories and feelings bottled inside for so long; when she started she couldn't stop. "Holly wanted to have the after party at her place, and I don't know how she did it, but it was perfect; the house was spotless and ready for the party. But Holly wasn't there that night," JJ paused, wondering. "I kept trying to look for her, but nobody had seen her. The next day, the school made us all go back – and I have no clue why they would make the championship game on a Thursday – and Holly was already at her locker. I made a joke that she was with her 'Secret Romeo', then she completely snapped at me and stormed off. I didn't see her for the rest of the day.

"That night she didn't come back to my house, so I went over to her place, to find her sobbing over a bottle of bourbon. She didn't say anything, just let me hug her and was sobbing into my shirt. I didn't see her for nearly a week after that, so I decided to swing by her place to make sure everything was all right, and I found a letter on the doorstep addressed to me telling me to forget about her, that she was going to live with her mom's side of the family back in Australia, and she would never see me again."

When JJ had finally finished, she felt like a weight had just been lifted off her shoulders. She didn't expect them to be listening to everything she had to say, but they were all still looking at her expectantly, waiting for more. "That's it," she concluded, and Reid went to embrace her in a hug.

She was confused at first, until she realized she had just soaked through Reid's shirt with her tears. Pulling back and wiping her face, she graciously accepted the tissue that Blake had handed her, and the gentle squeeze of the hand she had received from Morgan.

She finally realized that she didn't feel numb anymore, she just wanted to scream and cry and curse the universe for its cruelty. She was almost happy at how angry she was feeling, which led to a light chuckle that received a questioning look from Rossi.

"Something funny?" he asked.

"Life's funny. The universe is funny. This whole situation is funny, because it's so terrifying and ironic." JJ quietly said.

Hotch asked her if she wanted to take a break for an hour or so, as it was still very early in the morning.

"No, I'm fine. I'm actually much better now." She promised.

"If you need to talk," Morgan offered, "we are always here to help." This was met with confirming nods from the whole team.

JJ quickly muttered thanks, gave a small smile, and turned back to the projector, looking for any change or any indication of where they might be.

After a few minutes, JJ sensed a change in the video, although there was nothing visual to support her gut feeling. It wasn't until Reid muttered a "do you hear that?" that JJ realized what was going on.

Price had turned on the sound in the video feed, allowing them to hear everything that was happening in the video.

"He's turned on the sound," Blake muttered, turning on the laptop once more to video chat Garcia.

"Ask and you shall receive, dear Firebird, what can I do you for?" she greeted.

"Are you still looking at the video?" Rossi asked.

"No," Garcia sighed, "I try not to have anything on my beautiful screens for too long that includes a kidnapping or death or anything of the sort. I usually go with puppies and kittens."

"Turn it on," JJ told her, harshly.

Out of the corner of her eye, JJ could see that Garcia was taken aback by her abruptness, but she didn't apologize.

"Buttercup?" Garcia questioned. She was met with a shake of the head from Hotch.

"Turn it on Garcia, it makes sense." Hotch explained.

"All right, but I don't know how it- oh," Garcia gasped.

"The sound's on the video, Baby Girl," Morgan muttered.

"Yeah, yeah, I gathered that," she responded.

"Are you able to isolate any sounds in the room, other than Green's breathing? Maybe this could play to our advantage," Reid suggested.

JJ could hear the tapping of Garcia's fingers on the keyboard. "Sorry, Genius. Nada. What little sound I could get was just a car going past. Nothing out of the ordinary."

"At least we now know he's keeping her in a house." Blake offered.

"We just need to figure out who this Charlie guy is, and then we'll get her." Rossi said.

Yeah, but how long is that going to take? JJ thought. She let out an inaudible sigh, still not taking her eyes of her best friend, who almost seemed to be gaining some form of lucidity.

"Anything on Charlie price, Sweetness?" Morgan asked.

"Not yet, my sexy hunk of chocolate goodness, but I am digging so deep, you'll have to fish me out of China."

"Actually, the phrase that China is on the opposite side of the world is actually false," Reid chimed in. "It's actually quite funny, if we were to dig a hole straight beneath us, although this is completely impossible, we would actually end up just west of Australia; in the Indian Ocean!"

"Either way, you're fishing me out of somewhere," Garcia replied, trying not to take too much notice of Reid's known fact spitting.

"I look forward to it, Baby," Morgan smirked.

"Hey," JJ muttered. The team turned to look at her. "Something's happening."

JJ wasn't sure what it was, but it almost seemed like Holly was gaining some form of herself back.

"I think the drugs are wearing off," clarified the blond profiler.

Holly did seem to be becoming more focused, and her eyes weren't so crazed anymore, she was sure of it. Her breathing seemed to regulate slightly, and she wasn't muttering anything anymore.

"If those drugs are wearing off now, then she would've had a much lighter dose than we thought." Reid theorized. "He might have extensive research on medicine and drugs, because I think he purposely injected her with a light dose for her to understand what's going on?"

"So he might not be torturing her?" JJ asked, slightly hopeful.

"It might be a punishment of some sort, or he'll do it regularly. Either way, I fear that this won't be the only time he injects her with this drug." Reid responded.

"Garcia, can you check for anything that suggests medical knowledge with Price?" Hotch asked, turning to the screen that held the Technical Analyst.

"On it, Boss Man," she responded. It took merely a few seconds before she piped up again. "Got it! Price's mother, Maureen Price, was a Director of Nursing at Allegheny General Hospital before she died at the age of fifty-two from a brain hemorrhage. Yowza. Her husband, Benjamin Price, died four months after. Suicide by hanging, leaving Charlie an orphan at aged seventeen."

"That might be how he connected to Holly," Blake inputted. "If he did meet her just after her seventeenth birthday, that wouldn't be that hard of an ice-breaker."

"Did Holly ever go to any support groups after her family died?" Rossi asked, turning to JJ.

"No," JJ replied, still not taking her eyes off Holly. "She did do something like that at the hospital though, she just met with a few other patients. It was to help her psychiatrically and was part of her psych evaluation."

"Can they give us any names as to who attended? We might be able to figure out where he met her and when he developed this obsession with her." Hotch said.

JJ shook her head, turning to the Unit Chief. "The whole thing was anonymous. The patients didn't even have to say their names. Holly always joked that she'd go by her middle name, Grace."

The room let out a collective sigh.

"Jenn- Jennif-"

Everyone suddenly turned towards the screen, where Holly was staring intently at the camera. She wasn't high on the drugs; they must've finally dispersed from her system.

"Holly," JJ whispered, oblivious at that moment that Holly couldn't hear her.

"Jennifer," Holly whispered again. She still had a look of terror upon her face, and the terror was only heightened when she glanced slightly above the camera.

"Oh good! You're awake!" A loud voice thundered, causing everyone to jump. It became obvious that Price was standing just next to the camera; that was why his voice was inexplicably loud.

A figure slowly crept into the screen, wearing an all-black hoodie, with his back facing towards the camera.

"Good morning, agents," the voice began. "I'm so glad you could all be here to watch this. Thanks to our darling little Holly here," he grabbed Holly's cheeks with one hand, squishing them together, like what a grandmother does with their grandchild. Holly could not have looked at him with more hate and terror if she tried, "you all know my name. Which doesn't give you much, does it? The most you'll get it a bit of history on my family. Tragic story, isn't it?" He finally let go of Holly's face. JJ didn't even realize she had her hands balled up into fists, her knuckles turning white and her fingernails digging into the palms of her hands.

"You should all feel privileged. I've given you all front row tickets to see Holly," he slapped her across the face, leading JJ to take in a sharp breath, "finally get what she deserves."

"JJ we're on elev-" Holly tried to scream out, before her mouth was roughly clamped shut with one of Charlie's hands.

"Shut the fuck up you stupid bitch!" Charlie shouted at her. He began to put pressure on her ribcage, earning her a searing pain, but he didn't stop there. The pressure increased slowly and painfully, until Holly was gasping for breath and blinded by pain. He leant closer to her ear so the agents watching the video couldn't hear him.

"If you say one word about where we are, not only will I kill you, but I will kill every single member of your new team. And I'll personally make sure Jennifer's death is slow, and she'll know she died painfully all because you couldn't put a sock in it."

The team knew Price was saying something to Holly, further backed up by the look of shock on her face and the lack of words once he finally removed his hand from her mouth, but he was much too quiet for them to hear a word he was saying.

Tears began to stream down Holly's face and JJ immediately blamed herself because she couldn't find Holly in time.

"So," the captor said, standing up straight again. "Let's get down to business."

A/N- What do you think Charlie has on store for Holly? I'll try to update this as soon as I can! Stay tuned!

~MBL xx